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by Cynthia Salaysay
After seventeen-year-old Claire Alalay's father's death, only music has helped her channel her grief.
Claire likes herself best when she plays his old piano, a welcome escape from the sadness—and her traditional Filipino mother's prayer groups. In the hopes of earning a college scholarship, Claire auditions for Paul Avon, a prominent piano teacher, who agrees to take Claire as a pupil. Soon Claire loses herself in Paul's world and his way of digging into a composition's emotional core. She practices constantly, foregoing a social life, but no matter how hard she works or how well she plays, it seems impossible to gain Paul's approval, let alone his affection. Author Cynthia Salaysay composes a moving, beautifully written portrait of rigorous perfectionism, sexual awakening, and the challenges of self-acceptance. Now in paperback with an updated cover, Private Lessons is a timely and vital story that delves into a complicated student/teacher relationship, as well as class and cultural differences, with honesty and grace.
"In her debut novel, Salaysay does an excellent job of exploring all these facets and handles them with a sense of honesty and realism that allows Claire to shine as a fully-realized, completely believable character who will resonate with older teens…An excellent coming-of-age story with strong, believable characters and situations." —School Library Journal (starred review)
"Salaysay's debut novel beautifully explores topics not often addressed in YA fiction…Salaysay gets so much right, including the difference between public school in middle-class, heavily Asian Fremont and the rarefied, primarily white private-school world of San Francisco. Claire's need for affection and acceptance leads her into entirely believable and utterly sad encounters, while the strength she musters carries her through to an uplifting conclusion." —Booklist (starred review)
This information about Private Lessons was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Cynthia Salaysay holds a bachelor's degree in English from University of California, Berkeley, and has workshopped her fiction at Tin House. She has written food and culture articles for the San Francisco Examiner, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, the East Bay Express, and Civil Eats. Currently, she works as a Reiki practitioner and an operating-room nurse in Oakland, California. Private Lessons is her first novel.
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